The following discussion of the prior art is intended to present the invention in an appropriate technical context and allow its advantages to be properly appreciated. Unless clearly indicated to the contrary, however, reference to any prior art in this specification should not be construed as an express or implied admission that such art is widely known or forms part of common general knowledge in the field.
It is common to maintain redundant backup servers in a wide range of situations. The general premise is that one server acts as a master, and its data is mirrored to a redundant backup server. This is typically achieved using a mirroring protocol implemented via Ethernet or the like, and a primary focus is to ensure that hard disk data and/or flash memory data are kept up to date in the redundant backup. This means that, in the event that the master fails, there is minimal loss of data.
There are limitations in known approaches, stemming for example from delays that occur during the identification, transmission, and slave-side processing of data relevant to the mirroring process. Whilst these may seem minor (for example at the millisecond level, or perhaps a few seconds), they can be significant in some contexts. An example of such a context is gaming, for example where a server provides a link controller functionality for the purpose of awarding jackpots (which may be significant) to gaming machines.